Friday, October 29, 2004

The Eurabian Times notes the latest emission from the Association of Chief Police Officers. As Matt notes, the advice boils down to 'Do not arm yourself with legal weapons. Do not approach people who violate your home. Do not prevent them from stealing your property. Lock yourself in the closet and let the state handle it.' All that I would add to that is remember to take a flashlight into the closet with you so you can write your last will and testament while you're waiting to die.

Seems like some animals are more equal than others though. Householders finding Hannibal Lecter breaking in at 3 AM are warned not that police are "definitely not" advising people to have weapons in their homes. "We would not tell the public to arm themselves with any weapon, legal or illegal." But when it comes to dealing with Joe Public leaving the Dog & Duck, Mr Plod not only gets armed to the teeth, he thinks public execution is the only way.

Hey, say what you like about Tony Martin, at least the guy he shot really was a burglar, not someone who merely looked like he might be.

Yes, standard disclaimer follows: the two officers in question may have been justified in firing. It possible to feel some sympathy for these people as individuals - history shows they'll be thrown to the wolves. But how much sympathy can you have for them compared with this guy ? Does anyone think that if it had gone the other way, he wouldn't have been crucified by the state ?

That's the reality: people being slaughtered in their own homes, people being persecuted for not being slaughtered in their own homes. Now two of our touchy-feely social workers in blue, heavily-armed, wearing the latest body armour, and with reinforcements on the way, panic and gun down an innocent man and we're supposed to bring a bottle to their pity party ?

At least they had something Robert Symons and Tony Martin never got: a choice. They chose to wear that uniform, chose to serve the system which claimed Martin and Symons as its victims - yet now they lay claim to our sympathy for their sudden reversal of fortune, from hunter to hunted. That's it, that the central arrogance of the modern police - they cry foul when they're treated as though they were just ordinary citizens.

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Romano Prodi, the outgoing European Commission president, has described the EU's attempt to become the world's most competitive economy as a "big failure".

Any thoughts that this may lead to the EU considering the flaws in its basic model are swiftly dispatched:

Mr Prodi said the use of vetoes by EU states had undermined the reform agenda agreed at the Lisbon summit in 2000.

Yes, that's it! Not enough centralisation in Brussels. Of course, once you need clearance from the EU to open a packet of crisps, why, we'll be drowning in diamonds.

Mr Prodi told the Financial Times that EU member states had blocked progress in implementing the Lisbon agenda, which focused on cutting red tape and improving competitiveness.

Yes, they had a massive summit on cutting red tape. I think the basic flaw in this theory is becoming appparent. Here's hoping the EU rolls out a program to deal with drunkenness.

According to the FT, Mr Kok's report will call for the number of performance indicators set out in Lisbon to be reduced from more than a hundred to fourteen.

Is that a perfect testimony to the EU's Frankenstein approach to economics or what ? Eurocrats sitting in Brussels, carefully watching the output of olive oil, carefully fine-tuning subsidies and taxes to produce just the right amount.

Greater emphasis will be put on member states to draw up their own economic action plans.

Given that having British people run the British economy is marginally less stupid than having them try and run the Greek one, this is progress of a sort, yet it still misses the point: the economy isn't a machine, you can't pull a big handle and 'create jobs' or 'foster innovation' anymore than you can get a plant to grow 10x faster by dumping that much more fertilizer on it (even with the quality of fertilizer produced in Brussels).

But what really lies at the heart of the EU's failure is this:

In Lisbon, the EU set itself the target of overtaking the US economy by 2010.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to get filthy, stinking rich, but that isn't what they're aiming for. They're still obsessed with the zero sum paradigm. These people can't understand the idea that you can get rich by building a better mousetrap. To them, there's only so many slices of pizza available, and if those Yanks eat too much, why, it's no wonder that Europe is so often left eating the box.

Europe has a problem with innovation because the EU doesn't even recognise the concept of making money. To them, it's all about getting it from the other guy. It a sad, stupid, cannibalistic approach to economics - but it does have one advantage. If all we can do is keep swapping round the same old money then we surely need a referee to ensure that everyone gets their fair share. I'm sure the EU will help us out with that, right ?

Doubtless, the usual suspects will say this proves that the US is hopelessly corrupt. Yet, the only reason we can reach this conclusion is that the evidence is out there for the public to see. What chance this sort of information being made available in Britain, far less in Brussles ?

It's a bias hatrick at the Beeb today. Our final entry concerns the latest US fighter, the F-22 Raptor. You can tell Auntie is teed off with Uncle right from the headline: US rolls out most expensive jet - I thought the Left was in favour of public spending, but no, not this time. The people who speak out in favour of art therapy think the most important thing about a revolutionary aircraft is that you can't buy one and get change from a fiver (but Concorde was still a technical marvel).

In case you missed the headline, the first sentance rams the point home:

The first of a fleet of the world's most expensive fighter jet, the FA-22 Raptor, is being commissioned into the United States Air Force.

The US military has ordered 277 planes, the first of which was due to roll out onto the tarmac at its manufacturing base in Georgia on Wednesday.

It is to join a fighter squadron based close to the capital, Washington DC.

That would be the city which came under air attack three years ago - yet still the Yanks insist on defending it.

But doesn't the F-22 have any striking features other than the cost ?

The FA-22 stealth fighter can fly at 1500 km/h and still remain undetected by radar.

Or to put it another way: every other aircraft in service today is now obsolete.

Impressive, hey ?

That is the impressive part of the story.

Y'know, I'm not sure he's being entirely sincere here.

The other part is that, at a cost of about $260m (£142m) each, the Raptor is designed to fight a potential Soviet enemy that no longer exists, and a Third World War that - if it ever happens - will be very different from what could have been imagined in 1981.

Yes - in this kind of war it's a positive disadvantage to be able to blow the enemy out of the sky and then deliver a 2000lb bomb more accuratly than if you sent it via UPS. Mind you, the Soviets have gone (just like the Beeb said they wouldn't) and it's not like there are any other massive communist dictatorships with aggressive foreign policies and year on year double-digit increases in military spending (talking of which, I'm betting a search of BBC Online won't bring up any cases of the Beeb tut-tutting about China's military expenditure).

Some years ago there was a serious attempt in the Congress to scrap the whole project, especially as the revised cost exceeded four times the original estimate.

You mean the Democrats want to slash military spending ? Surely not!

It failed largely because of pressure from military contractors and labour unions in states that will directly benefit from this multi-billion dollar programme.

It's a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy after all. If there's one thing the BBC can't stand, it's companies leeching off the public purse to produce rubbish.

The introduction of the new fighter jet comes in the same week that its manufacturer, Lockheed-Martin, announced a 40% rise in profits as it processes orders for its next generation of fighter aircraft, the F-35.

An arms company making money during time of war ? Who'd have thunk it ? This sort of complaint doesn't exactly kill the theory that the licence fee prevents BBC employees from having any grasp of business reality.

So that's it then. A revolution in military aviation has occured and the Beeb's contribution is to carp. But don't call them biased.

BBC Bias ? As if, check this out, and see their commitment to cover the full spectrum of the moonbat community:

LONDON - BBC World, the BBC's global commercial service, has unveiled details of its US election coverage.

The 24-hour news and information channel will provide analysis over the next two weeks, with live election night coverage fronted by David Dimbleby.

BBC World will also broadcast a special edition of 'Question Time' featuring film-maker and author Michael Moore, columnist Richard Littlejohn and former Bill Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal.

Other discussion programmes feature guests such as Madeleine Albright, George Soros and former CIA director James Woolsey.

Yep - the Moonbat's favorite manufacturer of faux documentaries, Madam Hillary's house boy, Clinton's former Sec State, the guy who bank rolls MoveOn plus a constellation of other Loony Toons and a bureaucrat from the organisation that's waged a low-level guerilla war against the Bush administration. Oh yeah - and for balance there's a British Paleocon.

We should consider ourselves lucky they couldn't get Saddam out on bail.

Monday, October 25, 2004

Regular readers - both of you - will know that I'm sceptical about the whole "Conservatives are where Labour was in the 80s meme". Mrs T didn't spend the 80s telling all and sundry how important she felt unions were. OTOH, to listen to Nu Lab rhectoric, you could almost find yourself wishing they were in power instead of the current bunch of losers. Thing is though, just like in all the best 50s sci-fi, the invaders from the Planet Nulab certainly sound like actual humans, but they give themselves away eventually. They look at the Sun without blinking, hold the newspaper upside down or propose an asinine policy that's almost like a caricature of Conservative thought.

Let's get this straight: yes, Conservatives aren't happy when some nonce with eight billion previous convictions walks free from court, but most Conservatives are onboard with the principle that the prosecution must present evidence that a person committed a specific offence at a specific time, rather than that they merely possess a tendancy to commit crime, which will surely be the result of allowing previous convictions to be disclosed.

Indeed, Blunkett's proposals are just another example of what infuriates Conservatives about the legal system. Blunkett says that now a pervert who strikes again faces having his convictions brought up in court, since - hey, if they've done it once, they'll do it again. SO WHY NOT NAIL THEM FIRST TIME ROUND ?

That's what sends the public up the wall. Seeing convicted paedophiles get away with less jail time than Jeffery Archer got just for molesting the court system. Is raping a child more or less serious than lying on oath ? Gosh, that's a toughey, I'll get back to you on that.

This new policy makes no kind of sense unless it is argued that a nonce is a nonce is a nonce. Yet, the justice system is dominated by people who believe that all a predator really needs is the mental equivalent of an oil change and they'll be right as rain. This is the central issue but, as ever, Blunkett avoids taking on these entrenched culture warriors in favour of a headline-grabbing displacement activity.

We can consider ourselves lucky that Blunkett wasn't PM in 1982. If the Argies had invaded the Falklands on his watch, he'd have blockaded the Isle of Mann and shelled Anglesey.

Uh oh. Looks like HMG is going to try to bypass the need for actual trials to deal with undesirables. No doubt we'll be hearing from Liberty, the Wicked Witch and the whole rest of the civil rights ball of wax, protesting the despicable short-circuting of the rule of law.

11.41 Where the police have been called to an incident, which
involved the misuse of an air weapon, the FCC recommends that the
forfeiture of the weapon should be considered irrespective of whether
criminal proceedings are instituted. [Paragraph 9.22].

Now, isn't that nice ? Notice what's missing - it surely should be alleged misuse of an air weapon. Apparently, innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply where GUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNS are concerned.

The only circumstances where the Filth won't proceed with criminal proceedings in relation to a air weapon are.... well, forget it, these days Mr Plod could bust the Archbishop of Canterbury for carrying a water pistol and the Liberal establishment and the MSM would still hail him as a hero. Ergo, this legislation will only be used in cases where even the most Liberal of judges can't hold his nose long enough not to throw out the case. Which means Kool Aid drinking hacks will be allowed to seize private property with nary a hint of oversight. Meanwhile, our alleged civil rights watchdogs are screaming and ranting about lack of massages in Gitmo.

It's one thing to have firm views about politics and ideology but actually supporting a political party is a sign of mental illness. From time to time, there may be politicians whose policies are slightly less disasterous than than their opponents but, when all's said and done, they're all weasels - as exemplified by the revelations about MP's expenses.

Here's Britain's most expensive MP on her shafting of the taxpayer:

Merseyside MP Claire Curtis-Thomas.....

And the rest of you can STFU. She's a foreigner, born in Wales and all her previous experience was there and in Birmingham.

....topped the first published list of expense claims paid out in 2003-4 with her total of £168,889.

On Friday, the Labour MP said she was pleased the public could see the list.

"It is an irony that the MP who spends more will be working hardest for their constituents," she said.

"I ensure that I fully represent the community I have been elected by and therefore require high operating costs.

"I always have and will continue to work the hardest I can for my constituents."

Leaving aside the question of how she defines irony, how come these people never say this about the Army or the Filth ? The same freaks of nature who babble about 'effiency savings' are now trying to convince us that them taking a blowtorch to our cash means they must be doing a good job. What if she spent twice as much ? Would Crosby be a paradise on Earth ? And why does working hard mean your travel costs go up anyway ?

It gets better:

The expenses claims for all MPs totalled £78m - some £20m higher than two years ago.

But, of course. Clearly, the price of stamps must have increased 40% in that time.

The payments were defended by Sir Archy Kirkwood MP, from the House of Commons Commission, who said MPs faced greater workloads than ever before.

"They now deal with issues, and communicate in ways unheard of a few years ago," he said

...with words and everything.

"They require more back-up staff, more computer resources, and more allowances to enable them to travel back and forth to Parliament, living away from home for days at a time, while keeping in touch with the problems and issues of their constituents."

Well, Hell - let's dump all the IT then you won't need all the extra staff, right ? I'm starting to grasp why technology policy is such a train wreck in this country. Meanwhile, crack researchers are investigating when it was that MPs didn't need to travel back and forth to Parliament. It's just a hunch, but I'd guess things are a little easier now that, for example, ol' Platinum Card Claire can travel from London to Liverpool in less than three hours by train. Maybe it's the same syndrome which means office automation means they need more staff ? Back to the horses and buggies!

But former Conservative MP and journalist, Michael Brown, says the money spent overall is reasonable, costing every voter about £3 a year.

Shortly before announcing that the public should eat cake. Honestly, with political instincts like that, these guys should ready to sweep back into government by about 2278.

Labour MP David Winnick, who claimed £75,000, said MPs should submit their tax returns to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner for checks - as happens in America.

Not in our lifetime. Transparency is for the little people.

He suggested the Freedom of Information Act would mean BBC journalists would have to reveal their expenses claims and he argued newspaper editors should follow suit.

Fantastic! Two sets of arrogant parasites get nailed by the same piece of legislation. Of course, it's still worth asking why we need the FOIA to force a publicly-owned Corporation - one which keeps preening itself on its supposed exposes of everyone else - to reveal where our money goes.

Hey - it's a double header. Not only do we have Ken Bigley II (and with someone who makes Bigley look like Sir Winston) but we have a super sentimentality binge over in Robin Hood Country. Doubtless, the Fearless Boris is even now winding up to denounce these happenings. Anytime now.

Really.

Just you wait a minute, and he'll cut loose.

Hmmm......

Surely it wasn't something else he found objectionable about the Ken Bigley case ?

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

I've written before about my contempt for the L3 charge that those of us on the right are 'judgmental' - ask them about City salaries and see what they say. No, when Liberals complain that Conservatives are judgmental, they really mean 'judgmental about the wrong things'. They can't say that though, that would undercut one of their most cherished tactics, namely claiming that Conservatives seek to exclude people while the L3 seek to bring everyone together in a happy-clappy comunidee. You can tell how the Left hates to exclude anyone - look at the wide cross-section of political outlooks represented by the BBC.

With all that in mind, it's interesting to note this report from Laban Tall. Now, Christian Voice are not necessarily people you would want to live next door to, but they are citizens raising points with public servants. Quite simply, some of the replies they recieved are vile. People who claim we need to be 'sensitive' when dealing with paedophiles have no qualms about sending out offensive rubbish to those they deem not to be worthy of a place in Nu Briatin.

Doubtless, the last thing most Chief Constables want to do is deal with the fruiter end of the Christian spectrum. Well, funnily enough, the last thing most Conservatives want to do with their money is give it to a bunch of neo-Antoinettes, disgracing their uniform with their shameless promotion of a partisan political agenda. This would be easier to take if these people were any good at their jobs, but they have presided over the collapse of law & order, all the time being ready to prostitute their forces to Left whenever needed (free tip: if you wake up and find someone breaking into your house, don't phone 999 and call it a burglary, claim you're holding a Labour Party function instead). Yet, still these people live the life of Reilly sponging off the taxpayers money while occasionally leaning out the chauffer-driven car to spit at passing members of the Great Unenlightened.

That's what's so infuriating about the decision to let Police Officers march in uniform - it is an endorsement, and one given to a worldview that - in relation to issues such as gay marriage - is nowhere near universal (or even necessarily a majority view). This event marked the moment when Dixon of Dock Green gave way to Millie Tant.

This letter, believe it or not, was written by election-losing Aussie moonbat Mark Latham. It's scary when other people's loons make more sense than our own alleged Conservative Party. Here's a sample (but you should read the whole thing):

Your correspondence repeatedly refers to social justice but at no stage does it seek to ground this concept in any kind of factual analysis. Anyone can claim to be principled and compassionate. But if these are nothing more than abstract concepts, removed from real-life circumstances, they are unlikely to have a tangible impact on people's lives. They will lapse into the politics of symbolism...

In my experience, the strongest supporters of the rights agenda are those who do not have to face the daily consequences of irresponsible behaviour. They have the resources to buy themselves away from social problems, to purchase private security, private education, private health insurance and private transport. This gives them the luxury of being able to talk about human rights without the need for social responsibility

Sometimes, the Left is so transparent. Consider the case of 'Sir' Bob Geldof and his lemming-like trajectory from secular saint to ranting whackjob. Oops, no - 'ranting whackjob' is how the L3 would like us to think of him. They haven't got there yet, but not for want of trying. Take this latest missive from the Beeb.

In two television documentaries, Geldof launches a tirade against the evils of the 1960s and the country's high divorce rate.

He has seized on statistics that women initiate 70% of all divorces, suggesting they should lower their expectations of men.

Again, he doesn't quote, cite or point to - he seizes these statistics. When, exactly, was the last time - for the sake of argument - an environmentalist was accused of 'seizing on' statistics ?

Geldof's authority to speak about these subjects (or lack of it, say his critics), stems from the very public breakdown of his marriage to Paula Yates and its messy aftermath.

Ye - Geldof is short of qualificatons to talk about the family, as opposed to Bono, U2 frontman and Professor of economics at Harvard, apparently. To say nothing of any number of thespian experts on counter-terrorism.

Note too the labelling at the end. All three supportive comments come from people who the Beeb is careful to tie to the Conservative Party, yet all three critics are quoted sans any warning labels. This is what lies at the core of BBC bias - the idea that (for example) family campaigners are partisan fanatics, while their opponents are just talking common sense. That's what grates - not the fact that the Beeb pushes a Liberal agenda - though at times it surely does - but the fact that for much of the rest of the time it merely assumes that all the smart, nice people must be Liberals anyway. Dissent from the Liberal agenda is therefore proof of insanity, stupidity or evil and so the gloves come off. Geldof took the courageous decision to take on the Liberal establishment's prejudices when it comes to family issues, and so the Beeb has set the dogs on him - using our money to smear a man for expressing opinions a large part of the country would agree with.

Liberals often whine about the free market leading to selfishness, irresponsibility, a lack of social cohesion, blah, blah, blah. Well, try to find an incident in the private sector that's as flat out evil & perverse as this.

Sunday, October 17, 2004

While Blair has (for once) shown a bit of spine in refusing to wear sackcloth and ashes for evicting Saddam, some mustachoied mass murderers are a little luckier. Don't miss the quote at the end: The second element is that Germans feel they should no longer be judged against the yardstick of Hitler’s crimes. Is that chutzpah or what ? We need to move on from Aushwitz, while they keep waving the bloody shirt. Bomb 'em again.

Further support for the theory that the true legacy of Moore might be an upsurge in Conservative creativity and activism. It's certainly creative, though the management accept no responsibility for risk to mental health caused by watching this.

True confession - every now & then, I get the feeling that maybe banging away at the keyboard isn't enough. The country is suffering from a nasty outbreak of Liberal lunacy - surely I should put aside my own prissy scruples, rejoin the Conservative Party and help them rescue the country. Fortunately, given the nature of the modern Conservative Party, it is inevitable that long before the insanity has built up to dangerous levels some Tory MP will say something so utterly foul as to remind me that whoever this Party represents, it isn't people like me. Which brings me neatly onto Boris Johnson.

Certainly, there are good articles to be written about the whole cult of sentimentality which surrounds happenings such as the murder of Ken Bigley but the only people worse than those who wallow in mawkish sentimentality are those exploit tragedy to push their own prejudices.

The Spectator's Leader tries to spin reaction to the death of Ken Bigley as proof of some uniquely Scouse mental illness, to which all that need be said is 'Soham'. Perhaps fearing that this line of argument is somewhat weak, The Speccie then brings up an old libel, namely the 'drunken fans at Hillsborough' myth.

I never expected to see The Spectator attempt to cite the Sun as an authoritative source. As it happens, one reason for Liverpool's "failure to acknowledge" this libel may well be that Lord Justice Taylor, in his authoritative report on the disaster, specifically debunked the drunken fans myth. By 1993 even the Sun editor at the time of Hillsborough, Kelvin McKenzie would tell the House of Commons National Heritage Select Committee that his paper's reporting was 'a fundamental mistake'.

Lest we forget, the headline of that notorious story was 'The Truth' with the subheadlines 'Some fans picked pockets of victims'; 'Some fans urinated on the brave cops' and 'Some fans beat up PC giving kiss of life'. No sign there of the Sun hinting at 'the wider causes of the incident.' - except in so far as it hinted that all the dead were scum anyway. Resenting this sort of thing is what Johnson means when he talks of wallowing in victimhood (the line seems to be drawn a little differently for other people - what price a Conservative MP telling these people to 'move on') ?

A vote of thanks too for the Tory modernisers, whose deafening silence in the face of outright bigotry has confirmed once and for all that they are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the gay rights movement.

It occurs to me that this case sums up exactly what's wrong with the modern Conservative Party. They're too small for the issues of the day. An MP considers the Dianification of Britain, and reveals his hatred of Scousers. We are embroiled in a War on Terror and the Tories claim 'Blair Lied!'. The education system has collapsed and the Tories reveal that Blair has hired private tutors. Maybe there's room for this sort of thing in some cases, but with the Conservative Party at the moment that's all they have.

Conservative MPs talk openly of a 'post-ideological era' where governments will be chosen on the basis of their managerial skills, rather than any deep convictions. Really ? Liberals believe schools should operate cartels to ensure that each manages to obtain regular supplies of children. Is there no Conservative alternative ? Liberals believe that when intruders break into a home, the householder should merely call the Police, then wait to die. Can the Right suggest something better ? Und so weiter…there are no end of issues to which the same point applies. When Tories talk of a post-ideological era, they mean that they have moved past ideology - or to put it another way, they don't have the slightest idea how to fix Britain, so they hope that by a combination of carping, sneering and sniping, together with their good looks and personality, they hope to bamboozle the public into voting for them. Yet t still they wonder why they're down in the polls.

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Mr Kehoe investigated mass graves in the Balkans for five years but those burials mainly involved men of fighting age and the Iraqi finds were quite different, he said.

"I've been doing grave sites for a long time, but I've never seen anything like this, women and children executed for no apparent reason," he said.

John Kerry may want to rethink his plan to outsource the war to the EU, though:

Mr Kehoe said that work to uncover graves around Iraq, where about 300,000 people are thought to have been killed during Saddam Hussein's regime, was slow as experienced European investigators were not taking part.

How very unilateral of them. So why does our continent not want to cooperate with a murder inquiry ?

The Europeans, he said, were staying away as the evidence might be used eventually to put Saddam Hussein to death.

Perish the thought that the Iraqi's themselves should be free to decide whether mass murder was a capital crime. Can anyone deny the extent of Europe's moral collapse when even a mass grave full of women and children is treated as nothing more than a chance for more posturing ?

Some will now doubt be shocked by the finding of a link between the number of times you buy a ticket and your chances of winning the raffle - I suspect cattle prods had to be used to prevent the Beeb's writers labelling the findings 'controversial'. Speaking personaly, I'm staggered that these blokes actually broke Academic Omerta and reported on the disasterous consequences of Liberal policies. Still, they can't shrug off the habts of a lifetime completely:

Professor Bellis and colleagues say society is ignoring the problem for fear of upsetting a vociferous minority.

"Perhaps a greater level of statutory, pertinent and timely sex education is now required despite the complaints of a few.

"At national level, the choice to guarantee the delivery of high quality sex education is evaded, often to avoid offence to a sensitive but vocal minority," they said.

Given that the vociferous minority are the people least likely to suffer a case of the clap, it may be helpful if the alleged professionals started asking if they could learn anything from them, instead of treating them like some kind of squalid weirdos(Anyway, I thought these people were against being judgemental - blaming a explosion in the French disease on Christains sure seems pretty judgemental).

As the voters proved, while [Gren Party Leader Brown] is a Nelson Mandela in the drawing rooms of Surrey Hills, he's a clown in the kitchen of a working family.

They know the smell of manure.....

My second proposal is to educate Greens voters that there's no such thing as a free macrobiotic lunch. So let the Greens voters feel the financial sting of their insane policies, which would have us scrap our coal-fired power generators, end whole industries, ruin our coastline with wind farms and bury employers in extra taxes.

Let every Greens-pleasing policy now be funded by taxes on these new designer Greens who sure could afford to pay a little extra for their fickle passions.

It's time to hit the Greens of Toorak, Malvern, Armadale, Hawthorn, South Yarra and St Kilda with a Greens tax that will send them a message without hurting poorer families.

It's only fair, isn't it? And it may serve as a warning to the doctors' wives of what their flirtation with the Greens may well lead to -- a life back in the caves, with no central heating to help dry their nails and no Toorak tractor to pick up this month's lentils.

Dipstick Louise Ellman is pushing for a National Slavery Remembrance Day. Wouldn't 'remembrance' imply that it's actually, y'know, stopped ? Of course, while slavery is still rampant most of it is carried out by members of PC victim groups, so let's gloss over that and concentrate on a PC victimhood frenzy.

Even where they do acknowledge that it's still happening, it's always as a means to a PC end:

She will also push for a campaign against the trafficking of women.

She will say the smuggling of women for sexual exploitation is a new slavery.

No, same old slavery (oops, I suppose they don't talk about the Barbary Pirates in L3 circles). Of course, Louie is cool with non-sexual slavery, particularly if it only involves blokes.

Is slavery the perfect issue for Liberalism or what ? They can indulge the determination to enlist ancient crimes to promote an asinine victimhood (and its collorary: stupid, white guilt) hand in hand with a complete lack of interest - nay, even, objectively speaking, a hostility - to dealing with actual, real, solveable evil right now.

At least, I assume they do, judging by the sudden flip-flop in thei rhectoric. For about three years these people have been babbling about Iraq being a distraction from the war against Al-Quaida, how they were just bubbling over with enthusiasm to have Bin Laden's head on a spike but they didn't think this was the right way and what's more... To listen to the L3, they were all in favour of nuking Afghanistan, it was just in the case of the nation we were actually invading that they supported preemptive surrender. Well, now, suddenly things have changed.

First, the eighth dwarf, Shagger, claims that we need to fight a more sensitive war on Al-Q. Now, Claire Short - secular saint of soi dissant peace activism decides to move her light from out under that bushel:

In the interview with the English-language Gulf News, Short said she had been reading a book by a US intelligence analyst that painted a sympathetic picture of the Al-Qaeda chief.

“The author says Osama Bin Laden considers it a war, a defensive jihad, because the people in the Middle East are being crushed and destroyed and their resources, their oil, misused and they have got to defend their civilisation and their religion,” she said.

“So I think the killing of civilians is always wrong, all the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings said it was wrong, but I think the cause is just.”

Bonus points will be available for anyone who can cite a case of any L3 facecard making reference to Christian doctrines. Lest I be accussed of failing for Jew.... Zionist propaganda, I'll take Al-Q at it's word, and assume that its objectives are merely limited to conquering the whole Muslim world and imposing a Taliban-style dictatorship on it. That's what strikes Short as just.

And it gets worse:

Short saw little difference between the actions of British and US troops and terrorists, claiming allied forces had deliberately killed innocent people. “I think all of us should criticise the immoral message of targeting innocent civilians and it’s clear the coalition has done that to innocent civilians in Iraq as well,” she said.

She should ask her MP to raise it in the house. After all, if it's clear, there must be a shed-load of evidence for it, m'kay ? Otherwise, she's just propagating enemy propaganda in time of war, and I'm sure the Left won't stand for that. You know how much they support the troops.

At this point, I can but qote the Professor: these people aren't anti-war, they're just on the other side.

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

I've written before that I'm cynical about the Left charging Conservatives with excessive moralising. Ask Lefties about the environment, City salaries or smokers and you'll see a performance that'd put Martin Luther to shame. What I didn't appreciate until recently was that the same deal applies when Liberals talk about racism. The self-same people who profess to lie awake at night agonising about the fact people parading down British streets in full Islamist regalia are not greeted with a round of applause by the Infidel natives are A-OK with this sort of thing:

Exactly one month ago today, I was traveling on a London bus when a well-dressed woman boarded with her equally-respectable son in his school uniform. Ahead of her was an elderly American woman, who said, ‘I beg your pardon, I didn’t mean to bang into you.’ This prompted a tirade from the Englishwoman -- let’s call her Lady E -- that resembled a verbal assault by a brownshirt against a hapless Jewish pedestrian in 1933. The American -- call her Mrs. A -- sat down and cowered as the tirade continued: ‘I rejoice every time I hear of another American soldier dying! You people all deserve to die in another 9/11. You are destroying the world.’

Personally, I'm just glad I wasn't on the bus, otherwise I'd had beaten the L3 whore to a pulp. But how many Leftists would even think she had done anything out of the ordinary ?

Check out this story at the Beeb. Now, the headline is 'Beard row Muslim sacking appeal'. So it's a row about a bloke who claims Muslims must have beards, right ? Except history shows that the demands of Sha'ria are somewhat flexible. Take for example the rules against interest. Certainly, if beards are compulsory for Muslims there're a whole lot of folks in Pakistan and Turkey - to name but two countries - that haven't got the memo. Seems to me this is, as Charles Moore calls the rules on interest, actually a hardening of the religion, not an accommodation of its existing custom.

But still, let's give the Beeb the benefit of the doubt. Let's suppose the guy really does want to grow a beard. Is that so bad ? Can't we just cut him some slack ? No doubt some lunatics will claim this is yet another example of the camel's nose, but hey ? Can't we all just get along ?

Except we read on into the body of the article and find this:

The tribunal was told Mr Mohmed, a customer service assistant, also refused to serve alcoholic drinks to customers in the first-class lounge and a manager suggested he should wear gloves.

A customer service assistant who won't serve drinks is like a hairdresser who won't work with sharp objects. This is hardly some off-the-wall addition to the job. What is being attempted here is yet another case of tapping in, another attempt to establish special stautus and rules for Muslims that don't apply to anybody else. Virgin is being asked to assume Dhimmi stautus, bending to meet whatever demand the exploding community places on it. Meanwhile, the Beeb - which has long been the very exemplar of British Dhimmitude - is covering for the Islamofascists. Again.

Doubtless, some people - not all on the Left - will claim that we have to 'respect his religion', y'know, kind of like they'd defend the right of fundamentalist Catholics to get jobs with the British Pregnancy Advisory Service - wouldn't they ? Well, let me make it real simple for the hard of thinking: if you believe that the devil lives up your left nostril when you sleep (yes - the Islamoids do believe this) that's religion, if you think people who own hankerchiefs deserve to die, that's ideology. Muslims claim Allah won't let them behave like normal members of society. Fine, they have the right to believe the Earth was created by space monkeys if they want - but there is no moral right by which they can force other people accomadate them.

UPDATE:

Down in the comments, EU Serf reminds me that the EU has just backheeled Rocco Buttiglione on the grounds of his strong Catholic beliefs. Of course, Mr Mohmed specificaly disavowed any intent to let his beliefs intrude on his job, where as Mr Buttiglione.... what d'you mean t'other way round ?

Monday, October 11, 2004

Smarter folks than me have already commented on the mainstream media's weird obsession with calling terrorist scum 'militants', 'insurgents' or the like. All I'd add is that there's a certain double standard operating here. The self-same people who bend over backwards to try and prove that the British Army carelessly slaughters civilians by wanton firing, are completely unmoved by reports of car bombs killing huge numbers of Iraqi civilians. Ah yes, say the L3, we don't want to sink down to their level. But what level ? They just got through telling us that the bombers were rebels, guerillas, Robin Al-Hoods.... Sure, terrorists terrorise, but that's not what they call them.

So what are they ? Terrorists, who can be expected to kill indiscriminatly, or freedom fighters, who should not ? It's been over a year, you'd think even the Beeb would have worked this out now.

Here we have a crime that has shocked the nation, yet the usual suspects are laying low. Lee, Darcus, Garth and Diane are nowhere to be seen. As for Armani Trev, he's off in the hills checking the hay stacks for secret KKK hideouts.

Seriously, some charge alleged anti-racism activists with being motivated by mere racial self-interest, sort of like ethnic trade unionists. That would be an improvement. As their complete lack of interest in this latest happening shows, these people have not the slightest interest in any event which does not provide them with a platform for more ranting about blue-eyed devils. What shall we call a group of people whose public pronouncements are restricted to those topics on which they can lay the blame at the door of a specific racial group ?

Sunday, October 10, 2004

The death of famous french filosopher and giant haemorroid, Jacques Derrida, was commented on by Laban Tall. Samizdata also noted it, provoking an excellent summation of his work by Al Maviva:

While Derrida wasn't quite as damaging as the likes of Gramsci or Marcuse, but he was the footman that helped provide their bad ideas with philosophical cover in the academy, the media and the law. While the neo-Marxists argued that we needed to privilege the fool over the wise mad, the lunatic over the sane, the criminal over the cop, Derrida laid the philosophical groundwork (now widely accepted in the academy) that all observations are subjective, a mere produce of perspective. Derrida attacked truth at its most fundamental level, not arguing that it didn't exist, but arguing that it couldn't because even if it did, there was no way to express it. Starting with Aristotle's discussion of "strange words" and "familiar words" (the way a word spelled one way can mean different things at different times to different people) Derrida concluded that words had no fixed meaning. Sure, words have some play in them, but according to Derrida, if I say "stop" and to me it means "cease and desist" while to you it invokes the notion of traffic lights, then the concept of "stopping" cannot exist, and even if it did, there would be no way to communicate it. This laid the groundwork for the likes of Edward Said's revisionism of middle eastern anthropology, for queer studies, for an intellectual revolution as shoddy as the would-be student revolution of '68, and ultimately, for the binning of our Western cultural heritage. The ultimate conclusion of the coordinated assault on objective truth is the ipse dixit credo of the student revolutionary - that power is truth, and as long as I (the student revolutionary) am not in power, than what society says is "true" is false.

In Derrida's world, there can be no objective truth. Yes, this ignores the falsifiable fact that in the real physical world, chemical interactions and physics (and even sometimes math) do not work out precisely accurately, and that we accept "close enough" as true. What Derrida's philosophy missed entirely, is that it ain't a perfect world out there, and for all practical purposes, close is good enough. Sure, "stop" means different things to different people, but as long as we all have a notion of what it means, stop signs work well enough to keep the roads in order. Likewise, winners do sort of write the history books, but the only reason we can say that is that the underlying premise is that there is an objective truth out there, and the winners aren't writing that truth into the history books. Without that premise of an objective truth, the whole argument fails. It's that simple - there must be objective truth, or something quite like it, or nothing around us would work. Living in the margins of the meanings and connotations and play in words, Derrida was impossible to refute in argument - the word "is" doesn't even always mean "is", as we've found out in the last few years.

Yep, the only way to defeat Derrida's argument was to walk around the room, stub your toe, and wonder if there's no such thing as objective truth, why you can't wish away the hurt. That's right - reality itself is the refutation to Derrida's arguments.

In the end, his death is the refutation of his life. What say you now, Jacques? Hmmm... nothing... I suppose some of your more fanatical worshipers in the academy may now wonder if you ever existed...

Ultimately, not long after 9/11, Derrida apologized for the horror he had wrought. He stated in a lecture that he hadn't meant for what he said to be taken seriously, he was just playing around. Evidently, the ramifications of having helped to destroy the West's self-confidence were just starting to sink in, as he looked east and saw a rising Islamofascist tide. I won't say that I hope he rots in hell for what he did - I wouldn't wish that on him. But a few hundred millenia spent in purgatory pondering the error of his ways, and how his work served to rock the foundations out of the societal structures we rely on to stave off the bestial chaos of the natural order, would probably be in heaven's best interest. Derrida spent his life tearing down those things that stand between us and disorder - the culture, the state, the church, and the timeless values that we in the west hold dear. Assuming there is an afterlife and it comes with perfect knowledge, as most Christian sects and many non-Christian sects hypothesize, it seems that spending a long time contemplating one's own errors would be a most fitting punishment.

In Derrida's case, merely contemplating the fact that there is such as thing as an error, should be sufficient. And if there is such a thing as justice in the universe, it will be for a precise term of years, not one jot more, nor less. That alone will chafe him mercilessly.

I've slagged the Beeb off quite a bit in the last few days still, now and again, actual facts do make it through the wall of noise. Irene points to an astonishing moment of truthfullness from the Beeb in this profile of Turkey's PM:

But it is a question which continues to haunt him. Is he practising political "takiyye", the idea that a Muslim can hide his real opinion to gain a practical advantage?

Even supposedly right-wing media, such as the Telegraph, normally shy away from mentioning this little aspect of the RoP. But yes, Islamic doctrine does encourage members of the death cult to lie like rugs where it is to the advantage of the RoP. Mind you, knowing all this, how can the Beeb continue to pass on - virtually verbatim - any and all news supplied by Jihadbots, as though they were perfectly credible ?

Friday, October 08, 2004

Proof positive that there's no crude propaganda trick that Auntie won't swallow if it'll harm the Great Satan. Yep - the Damn Yankess have hit a wedding party. Again.

I dunno, maybe Iraq is the Las Vegas of Arabia, with thousands of couples unable to resist the romance of getting married on a battlefield ? Or maybe it's the chimneysweep thing, except with the wedding being particularly blessed if the bride meets a platoon of Islamofascists on the way ?

Personally, I think the the bimonthly exploding wedding is just the latest proof for the hypothesis that Islam screws up innovation. I mean, c'mon, another one ? Not to give aid and comfort to the enemy, but couldn't it be a fiftieth birthday, a graduation or - if they must stick to the theme - a twenty-fifth anniversary ? Here we have people who want to conquer the entire world and they can't work out that a regular supply of bombed nuptials strains the old credibility with all but the most frenzied of Kool Aid drinkers.

OTOH, who cares ? The Beeb, which won't allow Letwin to claim it's a nice day without demanding the air temperature and wind strength, keeps on reporting this garbage with nary a hint that we've kind of been here before. But don't call them biased.

Thursday, October 07, 2004

The thing is she actually has a point, albeit not the one she's making. The stupid socialist sow claims management should have noticed she was awful at her job and responded accordingly, yet when management did take the approproate action - namely firing the lazy cow - she claims the right to engage Sue, Grabbit and Runne. Could there be a connection here between awful management and employees with shysters on speed dial ?

Mind you, the L3 are all for firing certain civil servants. Quite right too - you wouldn't want those people dealing with cases like this. They'd probably screw it up totally, y'know, let a child die while they played with themselves in the office. You wouldn't want that.

Really - is there a better metaphor for modern Liberalism than these people laying in the brushwood and stakes to deal with the Vast Nazi Conspiracy while turning a blind eye to massive - dare I say institutional - incompetence. It's as if the practice nurse at Dr Shipman's surgery spent her time worrying that Norman Tebbit would break in at night and wire the examination table up to the mains.

That's the central problem with Liberalism. The tenets of post-modernism have rotted their minds to such an extent that reality only matters to them in so far as it rudely intrudes on their fantasies. So, a witch hunt aimed at imaginary Nazi social workers is priority A, but dealing with the dysfunctional nature of the average child care dept ? Yeah, whatever. Then again, that's how we got here. True, Victoria Climbie was being 'tortured' by western standards, but who are we to impose our views on Africans ? Isn't it the purest form of colonialism to insist that people in London should be bound by British concepts of right and wrong ?

That's what I mean about the skiving slag having a point. It's an asinine one, in so far as her defence is 'hey, there were plenty of other incompetent idiots there as well', but there is a deeper truth. There is absolutely no reason to assume that the obese slag was any kind of rogue element. Au contrair - had she been on a different case, she would still be there today. Victoria Climbie's misfortune was that there was no point to be made by rescuing her. Had her hosts been a church-going middle-class white couple, social services would have been camped outside at the merest hint of a bruise. But there's no, as the L3 would no doubt say, message to be sent by busting a couple of members of the ethnic underclass. Quite the opposite since, had Victoria suffered anything less serious than a brain haemorrage, the race hustlers and their fellow travellers could have been relied upon to stand foursquare behind her would-be killers.

The death of Stephen Lawrence provided the Left with a licence to indulge in all sorts of insane theorising about the sins of the Police, white males, the working class and various other L3 hate figures. Is it too much to hope that this case - at least as much a product of Liberalism as Stephen Lawrence was of the Right - may provoke some of them into just the tiniest bit of introspection ?

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Gosh! A disabled person gets blatantly discriminated against, and the Beeb is the voice of sweet reason. What's going on ? Oops.

Not that I don't agree with the Beeb, but - to judge by previous pronouncements - the Beeb doesn't agree with the Beeb. These people have been vigourous cheerleaders for the whole disabiity rights scam, but when it's their ox being gored, they start plagerising the self-same people who they branded fascists. Apparently, it's OK for professional victims to shake down 72 year old ladieswear retailers in obscure Welsh villages, because hey, a deaf, blind, paraplegic holiday maker may be passing through and want to buy a new top, but when a tiny, £2.5 billion corporation is under fire, well, that's just going too far.

I've said before that BBC bias often doesn't take the form of actual political cheerleading so much as the adoption of a set of attitudes towards wider social and cultural issues. Try this for a perfect example of that.

Talk about a straw man. No one doubts there are plenty of places at Loser St Primary. It the desperate battle parents face to get their kids into a school where the staff are sober more than 50% of the time that's the problem. The whole thrust of the Beeb's article is so asinine that I cannot believe it can be the result of an honest mistake. Like many people, I often talk about BBC bias being the natural, unconcious effect of having a news organisation that is a political monoculture. But this time we should not be so kind: there is simply no way this article represents an attempt to do any more than throw sand in the public's face. Even the Beeb must recognise this, hence this attempt at plausible deniability at the end of the article:

This also highlights the dispute over the so-called "surplus places rule".

This is the notion that popular schools are not allowed to expand if there is spare capacity in other schools locally - which parents say forces their children into schools they do not want.

The Conservatives once again promised to abolish this restriction this week. But the government says no such rule exists.

Education Minister Stephen Twigg has said that schools are already able to expand.

"We have provided the opportunity for the most successful schools to expand where such potential exists".

But when pressed on which schools had done so, Mr Miliband named just four: two in Bury, one in Bristol and one in Wokingham.

Notion ? It should be easy enough to determine whether good schools are expanding or not - particularly for a £2.5 billion news organisation. Of course, the Beeb knows full well that they aren't, just as they surely know that vast majority of allegedly surplus places are in supposed schools that are nothing of the kind. Only a group of people that exist in a never-never land, far away from the realities of business life, could possibly see any paradox in a policy of wanting to close failed schools while expanding successful ones.

One of the most transparent tricks the Beeb uses in its 'Have Your Say' feature is choosing questions along the lines of 'Is Bush Worse Than Hitler ?' or 'Conservatives: Should They All Be Shot ?' The scam is that the Beeb can then cite balance as the reason why 50% of the replies are by moonbats since hey, they have to reflect both sides of the debate on whether Lady Thatcher really did invent AIDS.

Mind you, this doesn't always work for Auntie. Take the recent Vice-Presidential debate, seems like pretty much everyone over there (including folks who scored the earlier Presidential debate a Kerry win) thinks Cheney beat Edwards senseless. So, does the Beeb relax the 50:50 rule in favour of something more representative ?

Well, they got halfway there. Click here and enter the parallel universe of the unbiased BBC.

Saturday, October 02, 2004

The term Islamic should be dropped when referring to terrorists in a bid to foster better relations between the West and Islam, Lord Carey says.

Yes, that's it. It's all down to our bad terminology. If only we called them 'terrorists of Islam', why, there'd be nary a massacre a year.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury said removing the word would "deprive a terrorist of his religious legitimacy".

...because, as we know, there's no one better equipped to rule on the religious legitimacy of Islamic terrorists than a former Archbishop of Canterbury.

It would also send a clear message to "the average Muslim" that they were not being blamed for terrorist attacks.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!

It's the Islamophobic backlash. Again. Doubtless the victims of Islamophobic violence are pouring into the nation's hospitals. They're probably in the same ward as the dying La-La, cruelly deprived of the chance to see his lover by the lack of Gay Marriage, and opposite the householder who tried to defend himself with a gun but got disarmed and shot with his own weapon. It'll be Ward 666 in Baron Munchhausen General.

But wait - if members of Islamic Jihad aren't Islamic terrorists, should those of us who are sceptical about the Religion of Peace really be called Islamophobes ? I mean, sauce for the goose here. What kind of message does that send ? Does it confer non-religious legitimacy ? A nation awaits an answer.

His comments come after Muslim leaders expressed concern about a growing gulf between the Islamic world and the West.

Actually, it's completely the opposite. Back in the day, westerners had only the murkiest of ideas about Islam. Now, folks round here are starting to get a clue.

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has warned that linking international terrorism and Islam was damaging.

Well, that's the Koran for you.

There is an urgent need to stop tarnishing the Muslim world by unfair stereotypes," he told the United Nations this week.

To paraphrase St Ann, they chop heads, murder school children and fly planes into buildings, but we make unfair generalisations, so y'know, we're both as bad as each other. She was joking, but in Dhimmiland, that's how it works. Islamic terrorism is caused by people calling it Islamic terrorism. The 2002 Bali bombing was a response to Australi taking part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Beslan was a response to the Russians invading Russia. Daniel Pearl was probably a response to his overuse of metaphor in his stories.

But don't say that the Dhimmis lack a moral compass - no matter what happens, they always end up grovelling towards Mecca.

Friday, October 01, 2004

This is news ? Someone remind me, when exactly did 'journalism' become a synonym for repackaging the talking points provided by the Treason Lobby ? Completely unsubstantiated allegations ? Check. A dubious document with an unconvincing backstory ? Check. Distinctly strange explanation of why no reply is included from the victim of the smear job ? Check....und so weiter.

If you were teaching a journalism course you could use this as a textbook example of unethical journalism - this from our famous 'public service' broadcaster. But let's not get bogged in talking about the many and varied ways this article offends against basic ethics. Let's just ask if the Beeb's decision to publish verbatim large chunks of the dribblings of an Islamofascist terrorist means we will be spared the Beeb's sanctimonius ramblings about its heroic refusal to give a platform to (ie cover) anyone labelled a right-wing extremist ? Probably not.